A Little Good: The Sisters of St. Mary in Texas

By Sister St. John Begnaud and Joseph A. Schumacher

The arrival of three Sisters of St. Mary of Namur at the railroad station of Waco, Texas, on September 23, 1873, brought remarkable change to the state of education in the center and north of the state. Hoping "to do a little good" by living their faith and establishing Catholic schools, Mother Emilie, Sister Mary Angela, and Sister Stanislaus were somewhat appalled to learn that Waco boasted only twenty-five Catholic families, and among them were only six school-age children.

But Protestants too appreciated the education that was offered. Other sisters came, and in less than forty years Waco, Corsicana, Ennis, Denison, Sherman, Wichita Falls, Fort Worth, and Dallas boasted flourishing Catholic establishments. Boarding schools offered girls in rural areas as well as towns an opportunity for education.

Who were those sisters? Where did they come from, what did they find, and why did they stay? That story, sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic, always challenging, is the subject of this book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Jan 9, 2012
• ISBN: 9781630875657

Sister St. John Begnaud

Sister St. John Begnaud, SSMN, was brought up in the Waco school, and has been a Sister of St. Mary for sixty-nine years. She has served in the Congregation's Motherhouse in Belgium as well as in schools established by the sisters in Texas, California, Congo, Rwanda, and Cameroon.

Book preview

A Little Good

The Sisters of St. Mary in Texas

Sister St. John Begnaud, SSMN

Foreword by

Monsignor Joseph Schumacher

1041.png

A Little Good

The Sisters of St. Mary in Texas

Copyright © 2011 Sister St. John Begnaud, SSMN. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Wipf & Stock

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

isbn 13: 978-1-61097-850-7

eisbn 13: 978-1-63087-565-7

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

The cover photograph is of Sister Mary Angela Healy, the first Superior in Waco and the sister of Mrs. Margaret Mary Healy Murphy, the wife of Mr. John Murphy, who was very instrumental in getting the sisters to Texas. The original photograph was taken in about 1900 and is kept in the archives of Our Lady of Victory Center, Fort Worth.

". . . to those sisters who so cheerfully made every sacrifice,

hoping to do

A Little Good

in Texas"

Foreword

A Little Good is the story of a small group of women whose dedication to education, and especially to evangelization, simply ignored insurmountable obstacles. Founded in Belgium when religious communities were forbidden, arriving in New York during the American Civil War, and establishing Catholic schools in areas of Texas unfriendly to Catholic presence, they changed the way the Church was perceived in North Texas.

Always struggling with debt, the sisters seemed to accept without question the fact that they were to build, as well as teach in, the academies they were asked to found. Ignoring the prejudice that often surrounded them, they simply offered a solid education, bearing witness to God’s love for all who came. Their diaries show us that they did so with humor as well as dedication, supported by faith and by the community of their sisters in New York and in Belgium.

Basing her story on diaries and letters, Sister St. John Begnaud, SSMN, tells something of the story from the point of view of the pioneer sisters, and in doing so helps us to see their faith, their courage, and their joy.

Those of us who were their students learned from the sisters the vocation we all have to a life of worship and service. They helped us understand St. Paul’s insistence to Timothy, God wants all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of truth. They changed our lives, and probably yours.

Monsignor Joseph Schumacher

Former Vicar General of the Diocese of Fort Worth

Acknowledgments

Inadequate though it is, this story owes a debt to many people:

To Sister Louise Smith, without whom this effort would never have begun, would not have continued, and would surely not have been published. She harrowed our archives, harried her archivist friends, and, together with Sister Camella Menotti, rescued me from electronic challenges;

To Sister Patricia Ridgley, who gently prodded, and raised significant questions;

To Sister Cecile Faget, who encouraged, challenged, and patiently edited the text;

To Clarice Peninger, who painstakingly shepherded every word and comma;

To Sherrie Reynolds, who, out of her experience and her generosity, leapt over several barriers;

To Mary Gottschalk, whose skill and care added to this document a precision of detail it would otherwise never have known;

To the present community of Our Lady of Victory Convent, who patiently listened to stories, and who joined me in remembering;

To Mother Claire and Mother Emilie, who dared impossible enterprises in the hope of doing a little good;

To Sister Mary Angela Healy, whose personal loss became gain for so many;

To each Sister of St. Mary of Namur, who, in her own way, has lived the charism that is the chalice for our gift to God:

In the simplicity of my heart, I have joyfully offered all to God.

Introduction

The goal of this undertaking emerges clearly only as I continue writing. Its intended audience is the community of the Sisters of St. Mary of Namur, especially those in the Western Province, together with their Oblates, Associates, Auxiliary, former pupils, and friends.

As members of the Western Province of the Sisters of St. Mary of Namur, we are conscious of two realities:

we bear the mark of our ancestors in the Congregation;

as Texans, we have distinctive characteristics.

How did that come about? The heritage is received from our founders and those who have lived the charism of the Sisters of St. Mary within our memory, into our own lifetime. But as Texans we are recipients of a heritage that is not like that of others; a gift that must be lived here, in this place, if it is to be integrated into the living tradition of St. Mary. Each generation, each participant, must live it uniquely if it is to take its place in the tradition to be passed on to the future.

What I first attempt is to explore the force that drove ordinary people, and some extraordinary ones, to undertake enterprises that seemed impossible. Was there a pattern that was carried on from one generation, one foundation, to the next? Such a design can be traced only in hindsight. What I think we see is consistent:

There are people who are not being offered the opportunity to hear the word of God. Obstacles are formidable.

Someone dares to say, We can’t do much, but we can do something. Let’s start here.

A few people begin a project; it meets with some measure of success; others join the enterprise.

As the group grows larger, someone becomes aware of another need, and proposes reaching out.

There are differences of opinion; will a new project threaten the success of what we are doing here?

Discussions are held; decisions are made. We will do this. Only a few will go, but the effort will be shared by all of us. Those who go will maintain contact; those who stay will offer prayer and support.

The identity of the Congregation undergoes a major, though almost imperceptible, shift.

But the story does not end there. Those involved in the new enterprise encounter different circumstances. Things are not quite the way they were at home. Is it possible to be faithful both to what we have received and to what we experience here? Will the people back home understand? What changes must we make to enter into what God is doing here?

That pattern seems clear in the movement from Belgium to New York. It might seem less evident in the movement to Texas, since in it there is no new language to be acquired, no ocean to cross—though the train trip lasted nearly as long as an ocean voyage.

But the situation they found was different. The political atmosphere, the population, the climate were different. Fevers unknown in the North brought sickness, even early death. We find references made to the frontier mentality, to ox-drawn wagons, and to tent cities. The Civil War had wrought chaos to economic structures; the Reconstruction had destroyed structures of leadership; the Ku Klux Klan continued to spread hatred of Catholics as well as of Blacks.

As the small communities of Sisters of St. Mary dealt with these situations, something was changing in their understanding of themselves, of their Church, and of the Congregation to which they belonged. They themselves would change, and through them, the consciousness of the Congregation. It would happen slowly, sometimes painfully. Again and again the decision had to be made, at each level of relationship: Can we do this together?

It may help us to do this in our own day if we understand the early stages through which our history has passed. That is the purpose of this story.

1

Beginnings

It’s really a rather unlikely event that the Sisters of St. Mary are celebrating almost 137 years in Texas, Sister Patricia Ridgley remarked as she reflected on her Congregation’s history. As a matter of fact, the Sisters of St. Mary almost didn’t come to Texas, and once arrived they almost didn’t stay. But come they did, and stayed, learning, as Sister Patricia puts it, that when you undertake a venture, you don’t be too quick to turn back, and don’t do it alone !"

St. Paul, looking back on all he had done and forward to all he hoped to do, put it in other terms when he wrote to the Church in Rome: All things work together for the good of those who love God (Rom 8:28). Clearly God had prepared him, by education and ancestry as well as personal zeal, for a ministry he could not have foreseen. So the Sisters of St. Mary of Namur, looking back upon their history in Belgium, in New York, and in Texas, and looking forward to their hopes, have reason to echo St. Paul’s assertion with personal conviction.

The improbabilities are there in history. The Congregation was established in Namur, Belgium, in 1819, when religious communities were forbidden throughout Belgium. Sisters of St. Mary would travel to New York in 1863, during the raging Civil War. Arriving in Texas in 1873 from Lockport, New York, they might have been labeled as despicable carpetbaggers! In each of these events, there seems to be a defiance of impossibility, but divine guidance is clear.

Their story opens in Belgium, a small country of northern Europe that remembers a chaotic history. Conquered by Julius Caesar, who described the inhabitants of that area as contentious, the area later knew Charlemagne and his immediate heirs as rulers. In the Middle Ages, the territory was marked by feudalism and then brought into centralization by the Dukes of Burgundy. Under Spanish rule in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (the territory was then known as Flanders), it was ruled by Austria in the eighteenth century, until the Brabant Revolution brought its people into the proud Les États Belgique Unis in 1790. That freedom, however, was short-lived, as the Austrian army retook power in December of 1790.

A victim of its strategic location, Belgium was bartered by more powerful neighbors. Belgians were not consulted when, in 1814–15, the Council of Vienna handed them over to the Prince of Orange, uniting them with the Netherlands, which were staunchly Protestant. Only forty years later, after another revolution, would the country gain political independence. Even then, it remained subject to the authority of larger nations as they sought a balance of power that might help them avoid conflict.

Reflecting, in his Short History of Belgium, on the many political changes, Dr. Léon Van Der Essen, Belgian historian and Professor at the University of Louvain, in 1920 commented: "The national culture of Belgium is a synthesis, where one finds the genius of two races, the Romance and the Germanic—mingled, yet modified by the